I’ve FINALLY! named this story of mine. I’m going to call it The Letters. I mean, okay. Sure. This could just be a working title and not really worthy of the story itself, but right now this is what its telling me it wants to be called. So this is what I’ve started referring to it as.

But why, Panda? Why are you calling it this?

Because throughout the course of the story, a series of letters will be written. The main characters, the series of protagonists that show up throughout the story, are going to use letters as a way to communicate with one another. Sure, the first generation will be writing those letters by hand and sending them via snail mail, and the second generation will be doing both snail mail and email, and the third generation will more than likely be emailing and texting (and Facebook messaging, and Snapchatting, and however the hell ELSE kids today communicate with one another… actually, that’s probably a really good thing to research, isn’t it), but this is going to be more important than a simple phone call.

And of course I am going to write out those letters and include them in the story. Well, maybe not all of the letters but a number of them will certainly be included where they need to be. I’m hoping that I can use the letters to help flesh out parts of the story that don’t need a whole explanation. The scenes that have been created are essential, in my opinion, to the story. But the letters… I feel as though the letters will help to flesh out the characters.

Which brings me to something else. I really, really, REALLY need to work on renaming the characters. See…. this is…. well, it’s….

OKAY IT’S A FECKIN’ FANFIC, OKAY? This whole story started out as some kind of AU fiction that spiraled away from another fiction story that I’ve been working on with Koala for several years. Fuck, for almost a decade!

…and just like that, my muses stopped talking to me. I don’t think they’re mad at me, but I think my mind is spinning in a different direction than it needs to be spinning right now. I mean, right now I’m sitting here in the library at UM-Dearborn, knowing full-well I should be writing but instead I’m just watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Perhaps I should stop focusing on the story and focus more on a little… character creation? I mean, one of the characters in this story is based 100% on a real-life human being, but perhaps I can start to hash them out as well. Perhaps I can find more character-building questions and make this character into something really real that is more my own than a real-life human being.

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A little #LinspirationSo this is the lock screen on my phone right now. Those big, tired-looking brown eyes belong to Lin-Manuel Miranda, who if you don’t know, is a certified genius. It’s true, he is. He even has the awards to prove it. But why, pray tell, is Señor Miranda my phone’s lock screen? Well… for inspiration. Every time I look at this picture I think, “Okay, this guy is only two years older than I am, but has accomplished more than I have in this lifetime and possibly the rest of my lifetimes. So why does this bother me the way that it does? Because… well… it doesn’t. It doesn’t bother me. It shows me that with a little hard work and a little get-off-your-ass-and-finish-what-you’ve-started that I can do exactly what I want to do, and I don’t have to listen to anyone tell me that I’m crazy, or I’m out of my mind, and that I should just put aside the notebooks and everything else and just focus on survival. Well I’ve got news for you all — I write to survive. I write like I’m running out of time.

Ugh. Thanks, Lin.

But, in all seriousness, every time I look at my phone I see those eyes staring back at me.

Why aren’t you writing, Panda? Why are you looking at your ph- what is so important on this little digital device that it’s taking your mind away from your goal? What’s up, Panda? Pollo!?

The Pomodoro Technique is something that I sometimes employ when it comes to trying to budget some time. If I have a timer going off every twenty to twenty-five minutes or so, it forces me to at least try to be productive. Lately, regardless of the inspiration, I’ve been having a rough time just getting motivated enough to sit down with my bag and my notebooks and my computer and my music and just write. Lately, between contracting some horrible flu virus and having to work 30+ hours a week just to compensate for taking time off for being sick, dining the time or the motivation to write has become, well, fucking difficult. Even a change of scenery hasn’t really helped.

So right now I have my tomato timer set and this is my blogging block. I have exactly twenty-five minutes to put this entry together and post it before I have to move onto the next block. I only have roughly three hours to spend in this, the Carl Sandburg Library here in Livonia (Michigan, for those of you who are paying attention but not at the same time), and I’d really like to at least get caught up to where my story is so far.

See, I decided not to be linear with this one. I decided that, whenever a thought or an idea struck me I was going to stop in mid-sentence and start up with the new idea. Granted it’s all the same story, just different chapters, but still. It’s become difficult to keep tabs on where I am in each of the chapters, and has proven to be harder than I anticipated to make sure that some continuity remained. This is what I get for bucking the norm, but maybe that’s a good idea for me. Maybe that’s the reason I find myself dying in the middle of every story I’ve ever tried to write. So maybe this is a good thing.

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There are two people whom I trust when speaking about the art of putting together the perfect mix tape. One, is Rob Gordon (shown above), and while I know he is a fictional character, he speaks the absolute truth about mix tapes. The other person whom I trust is Lin-Manuel Miranda, who has proven to me that I was doing it right all along, yet never did it enough for those whom I truly loved.

So I find myself going through my music, searching for the proper soundtrack, when a thought occurs to me. Lightning strikes my brain in the least painful way. “Panda,” I said to myself. “This character that you’ve been writing, that you’ve been creating, that you’ve been focusing on… he’s EXACTLY your age!” And then I laughed for a good twenty minutes because I realized that I knew exactly what he was listening to growing up, and exactly what he was listening to at that very moment.

A huge part of the plot came to me the last time I was home. I wasn’t there for long, but as per the usual there are always a number of boxes filled with my crap in the basement of my parents’ house — where, I might add, I spent my formative years — for me to rummage through. And so I did just that. And in one of these boxes I found a number of notes, folded in all sorts of strange ways, all written either to me or by me and my boyfriend collectively, back and forth, stuffed in my locker… well. Regardless of what may have been in those sap-covered creations, I thought perhaps that maybe, just maybe, both generations of characters in my story share their love story through, well, love letters.

Now all I need to do is remember how to write a love letter.

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This is what I told myself a week ago. I told myself that I would have something published by the end of the year. And, sure, it’s only January, but I’m feeling extremely confident about this one. Actually, when you get right down to it, I’ve been having a blast with this project. And, for once in a very long time, I’ve actually been thinking about it before writing it all out. Oh, sure. I have some scenes already written down, and I have a notebook where I’ve been keeping the writing thus far (save for a scene which I’d typed up while sitting waiting for my flight to leave from the Delta terminal at Detroit Wayne County Metropolitan Airport), and in the back of said notebook I have notes for a timeline, bits of story here or there, ready to be added into the notebook when the time comes.

All in all, I’ve been treating this one almost with kid gloves. Yes, I want to simply jump off the diving board head-first into the warm, choppy waters, but I feel like… I can’t. Not just yet.

Because while this project has a timeline and a structure and a plot and characters, it doesn’t have a title. I mean, it doesn’t even have a working title. I’ve just been calling it “My Own Joy Luck Club” because right now that’s how it feels like it’s going to end up. It’s a story that spans at least two generations of falling in love and finding yourself. A multi-cultural love story, if you will. But it doesn’t have a name just yet.

And I feel like I won’t be able to properly move forward with the narrative until it does. I feel like it’s something that is severely lacking here. And yet, every time I sit down and try to figure out a title, nothing seems to work. I’m not caught up on it just yet, but I fear that it might become a problem in the later rounds. But for now, I continue to plot, and continue to construct, and continue to put the story together scene by scene.

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I consider myself to be a pantser on most days, someone who has the mere hint of a story hiding in their brain, and when I sit down to start writing I just go at it. I have the idea of characters, of who they are and what they look like, of where they live and what they’re doing on their daily routine to lead them to the point in their timeline where we meet up with them, but after that I just let the character dictate where the story is going.

This, I’ve come to gather, is the reason why I haven’t really finished anything in my lifetime. I have no idea how any story is supposed to end.

During this year’s NaNoWriMo I won a number of books during the NaNoWriMotown’s Midway Madness raffle, including one on plot and structure. Two words that, until recently, have never really been involved in my storytelling. I’ve just been one to sit at the keys or with a pad and pencil/pen in front of me and just write. And, most of the time, I’ve had a lot of fun with what I’ve written… but I’ve never been able to fully finish a story, to fully complete the arc and make it, well, a complete story.

So I’ve been reading through the book on plot and structure. So far I’ve learned a few things about structure, a few things that I’ve been leaving out and therefore have felt as though my stories have been lacking. So, on this next journey into fiction, I am going to give it my all and attempt to structure the story properly. I’m really just hoping that this turns into something fun and useful and not another profile in failure. I’m getting to the point where my profiles in failure are no longer fun, but rather disappointing and just plain ol’ sad.

I’ve always kind of adopted this mentality. Whenever I sit down and try to plot and plan out a novel, it never ends well for me. Sure, I have a series of points all lined up and ready to go, but when I set out to actually outline a story? I always feel like I’m trying to hit checkpoints, like if I don’t pass certain points along the way the story that I’m setting out to write is just going to fall flat. But I also feel like if I don’t have those particular checkpoints the story won’t go anywhere, and it’ll get there in a big damn hurry.

“When you head into a piece of writing without the planning, the job of the writer is to create.” And this is where I am right now. I’m sitting here, not worrying about a word count or even a page count. I have an idea that I would love to get down on paper, an opening scene for the newly revamped Tequila Mockingbird. I’m sitting at a table, headphones on and playing some playlist that I’ve been setting up over the past few weeks — playlists for me are always a work in progress, okay? — and I think I’ve gotten… a paragraph of this new scene on paper.

This is where adopting a new mentality is going to be difficult for me. I’ve always had it in my head that I have to write a specific number of words, or a specific number of pages. But writing without a set goal in mind? I’m not sure if I can accomplish this the way that I would like.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t try.

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This was tweeted by yours truly nearly six months ago. This was at a point where I’d been working 20+ hours a week, taking 18 credits, and spending 10 hours at an internship which I loved more than life itself. This was a time in my life where busy wasn’t a strong enough word. I wasn’t busy, I was swamped. The moments I wasn’t doing homework, or working, or trying to sleep, were spent either writing or “playing” with Koala.

I have since graduated, and the internship is long over. And while I have gotten a few extra hours at work, my time has been considerably freer than it had been six months ago. So… why have I not focused on my writing? Well, I suppose it could be a number of things that have me not writing as much as I would like. I mean, I can think of a few reasons why I haven’t gotten it together, haven’t gotten the ball rolling at the speed which I think it should be rolling, but none of them are related to the writing itself.

What I really need to do is just… sit somewhere, not thinking about the world for a while, and just write. Forget the computer (or at the very least turn off the wireless), and just sit there with my notebook and pen and what have you.

The only problem with this is that I enjoy doing research as I go along. If I have an idea for a setting, I like to find the perfect setting and then describe it using what I’ve already seen. So, I would need some kind of Internet connection for this. But the truth of the matter is, if I went to a public library I could always take notes and then use one of their computers to conduct said research. Remember when libraries used to have books that you could use for shit like this? Well, some of them still do, but they’re few and far between.

Oooo. You know, come to think of it, I may plan a little excursion to the dirty* side of town. I really like that space, and who knows. Maybe it’ll be conducive to the process once again. Plus, Somerset has some really nice stores, and I haven’t been to any mall in a minute. Hmm. Perhaps I have an agenda for tomorrow after all!

*I say dirty, but really it’s the part of town where my former roommate lives and works, and frankly I don’t really want to risk running into her again, ever.